


Under the Hood

by jhoom



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Detective!Cas, F/M, Implied Violence, Implied drug usage, Implied sexual acts, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Superhero!AU, Vigilante!Dean, cop!cas, sex then love, vigilante!jimmy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 17:33:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20764235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jhoom/pseuds/jhoom
Summary: Three men, brought together by circumstance and bad luck, find a way to do good for the people… and maybe for each other as well.





	Under the Hood

**Author's Note:**

> Oh dear, it's the last DCJ Hiatus Indulgence :( after missing last year's because of, y'know, the birth of my second child, I definitely wanted to participate this year! Also a huge fan of those Jensen pics (y'know the ones) and kind of went from there. This is a bullet list style fic simply to work into my schedule (bc ofc this would be 50+k if i let it... this was the only way i could reel it in and actually post something)
> 
> Come visit me on tumblr [@jhoomwrites](http://jhoomwrites.tumblr.com) to talk dcj, superheroes, jensen, or really anything ;)

**Castiel: The Cop**

  * Castiel is a detective, working so many damn homicide cases it makes him sick. It’s not even what he wants to investigate, but it’s what he’s assigned and he’s going to help these people get justice for their dead loved ones. 
  * (What he really wants to work on is private, deeply private. It’s tied to a homicide, drugs, and a missing person’s report gathering dust in a file he has buried in the bottom of his desk. He works on it, discreetly, because his last CO told him he’d better not ruffle any more feathers looking for someone who doesn’t want to be found.)
  * (“You’re wasting your time, Castiel,” Uriel sneers at him. “Jimmy’s dead.”)
  * Slowly, Castiel notices a trend in the most recent homicide cases. Drug dealers, for one, instead of their victims. And the whispers of a masked man, a man in a red hood exacting the vengeance that the police won’t. _Can’t_, Castiel corrects, because he _wants_ to. But due process is a thing and you can’t just kill people on a whim. 
  * Even if, as he investigates, Castiel does come to the conclusion that these are in fact Very Bad People that are dying. 
  * It takes a few months, but the police are at a loss, so they make Castiel the head detective of the Red Hood case. He gets his usual case load, but it’s all murders that they’re pinning on this masked vigilante. Castiel’s only way to truly solve the cases is to bring this “Red Hood” to justice.
  * The pictures are all blurry, the descriptions differ from witness to witness. Some of them say he always wears the red hood, others say they’ve seen him in a smaller black mask. His size, his build, the damn color of his hair changes depending on who he asks. It’s driving Castiel crazy. These witnesses are experiencing trauma, they’re clearly unreliable— 
  * Oh shit. Oh _shit_. 
  * They’re not unreliable. They’re not. 
  * There’s _two_ of them.

**Dean: The Mail Boy**

  * Dean used to be a confident executive in another city, high up and rich and loving life. Sure, he’d dabbled in drugs, but just to relax. He’s in control of his life, his body, and he maybe toed the line a few times but he never got himself addicted. 
  * Sam did, though. Stupid, naive Sam. And that damn bitch Ruby from accounting, drawing him into it. By the end, Sam was stealing from Dean just to buy more. He’d gotten fired from work—how had Dean not _known_—and the only reason he’s still alive is because he’d had the good fortune to OD at Dean’s apartment when Dean was fucking _there_. 
  * Worst day of his life, watching the paramedics work on his brother. 
  * He cut and ran, went right to the source of that awful drug that nearly took his brother. Demon Blood they call it. Good shit, until it turns on you and ruins your whole fucking life. This is where they make it, this is where all the supply comes from, and this is where Dean’s going to stop it. 
  * He’s on the streets for a while trying to build leads, figure out who and what he needs to work to get answers. He gets jack shit, so he tries another tactic. 
  * He joins the police force. 
  * Not as a cop. Fuck that. Crooked cops haven’t done jack shit so far. No, Dean works in the mail room. He goes for glasses, ties, short sleeved button downs, anything that will make him look harmless and dorky. 
  * (Where is Sam to roll his eyes and tell him he _is_ harmless and dorky?)
  * (_Was_ harmless. Not anymore.)
  * He drops off the mail, chats it up with the cops, and hears things. Reads things. Learns so much about the drug scene in the city, and uses that to plan his attacks. 
  * The mask is… convenient. He doesn’t care if people know it’s him doing this. This is good fucking work and the people, they love him for helping clean up the streets and stop their families from dying. He knows they do. It’s just that he ain’t _done_, and it’d be pretty fucking inconvenient to get IDed by the cartel and shot in his damn kitchen one morning.
  * Or to find out they’d gone after Sam. 
  * So the mask. Definitely a mask. 
  * He’s well funded, well supplied. He’s in good shape, years of jiu jitsu just for the sake of exercise now saving his life day after day. The shooting range is new, but it turns out he’s a damn good shot. 
  * A few months of work, he’s making progress. Lots of progress. Suspicious amounts of progress. The drugs are off the market, the dealers are scrambling to keep things together and find new buyers. Dean’s doing his part for sure, but he can’t for all of this change. 
  * Shit. There’s someone else. Some other vigilante in a red mask with the same idea as his, making these fuckers pay. 
  * It takes him a while to get over his shock, and then he thinks… in what way is this a _bad_ thing? 
  * They should team up. 
  * He nearly gets shot when he suggests this to the red dude, which pisses him off. Can’t that shit see they’re on the same fucking side? Has he been so far up his own ass that he thinks _he’s_ been doing it all on his fucking own? 
  * They come to an… arrangement. They’re so worked up fighting each other—Red Hood pissed that someone’s trying to get close, Dean because like shit he’s letting this ass go after trying to _shoot him_—and what can Dean say? He can’t see the dude’s face, but his body is smokin’. Besides, sex and killing people go hand in hand, right?
  * For them at least it does. 
  * Dean never finds out who the dude is, though. They keep their masks on even when they fuck. Y'know, as a vigilante courtesy to protect their identities. 
  * It’s also really fucking hot.
  * Dean invests more time leveraging his position at the precinct. He runs into a detective there, the one working the Red Hood case. The guy’s awkward and kinda cute, though so about The Law that Dean knows better than to fall for him. He does flirt pretty shamelessly, though, to find out more. 
  * It works. 
  * There’s something undeniably familiar about the detective, whether it be the way he moves or his scent or maybe something even more elusive than that. Dean can’t even put a finger on _what_ it is about the older man, so he files it away for future reflection. 
  * And then the detective asks him out and Dean goes because why not? A little fun, maybe more access to info later on… And it’s in bed with Cas that Dean’s very very confident he knows this man. And more importantly, he knows why the police never seem able to catch the Red Hood. 
  * Cas is the fucking Red Hood. 

**Jimmy: The Vigilante**

  * The rise and fall of the skyscrapers was a comforting backdrop, one that he’d become intimately familiar with these past few months.
  * He misses suburbia. The quiet, the peace of it. He misses his family, he misses his old job as an accountant, he misses the good ol’ days. 
  * But these fuckers stole those days from him when they put that drug on the market and managed to get some lonely mom in his neighborhood on it. Soon all of the stay at home parents were dabbling in Demon Blood and Amelia… 
  * He refuses to think about Amelia. 
  * (He also refuses to think about his brother. Things with Cas were always intense, always, and they certainly escalated in the aftermath of Amelia’s death. He remembers falling drunk into his brother’s bed one night, and then more soberly the next three nights.)
  * (Jimmy feels bad about that. Not because of what he and Cas did together. That was a long time king and it’d been amazing.)
  * (He feels bad because it’s like he led Cas on, making him think that together they’d make it through this.)
  * (Maybe Cas will take him back when it’s over. He’s not holding his breath on that one.)
  * He doesn’t have a lot of money, just a give ‘em hell attitude that really pisses off the cartels when he starts killing their men and blowing up their shit. Then he realizes he can make more of an impact if he also steals their money and uses it against them. Take their product, take their cash, take their future. 
  * The red mask is just for show (and maybe a smidge to protect Cas), but when people start calling him the Red Hood, he has to admit, it has a ring to it. 
  * When he walks home to his shitty apartment, he hears people on the street talking about him. _Him_. He’s making a difference, and he likes to think he can save someone else’s Amelia since he couldn’t save his own. 
  * (He visits her grave after that to tell her. He cries and can barely bring himself to say the words, and in the end he breaks down sobbing and whispering apologies for not being in time to save her.) 
  * (“I’m sorry about Claire, I just— I—” More sobs and he knows there’ll be no more words.)
  * Meeting the other vigilante is… eye-opening. He doesn’t know if he’s a copycat or maybe a trap set up by the cartels to draw him out. When the man’s under him moaning, he finds he doesn’t care too much either way. 
  * “What the hell do I even call you?” Jimmy snaps one night. No names, of course. No faces, nothing but their work and their dicks.  
“Nightwing.”   
“Did you just make that up right now?”  
“Fuck you, it’s a cool name.”  
”You’re a pompous ass, you know that?”  
“Don’t be pissy just because you didn’t bother coming up with your own name, _Red Hood_.”  
“You don’t even have _wings_.”  
“I do work at night, though.”
  * The bastard spray paints wings onto his suit the next time Jimmy sees him. He really is an ass… and he really does kind of like the guy. The snark reminds him of Cas.
  * Begrudgingly, he admits they work well together. 
  * He gets the sense that Nightwing is doing the same thing he is, looking out for someone he cared about who got fucked over by Demon Blood. 
  * “Lemme wear the Hood.”  
“...”  
“Please—”  
“Will you fuck me while you wear it?”  
“Hard yes on that.”
  * It’s a good thing they’ve got going. Routine, rhythm, righteousness in the face of death. Jimmy’s sure he’ll miss Nightwing when it’s all over. 
  * (Maybe he hopes there doesn’t actually have to be a good-bye.)
  * The end is close, so close. Just one more hit to go...

**Castiel: The Solution**

  * Dean is handsome and harmless. Castiel’s type, apparently, because in a lot of ways Dean reminds him of Jimmy. 
  * They flirt and then date and then date some more and… it’s good. So good that Castiel toys with the idea of abandoning hopes of saving Jimmy. Whatever path he’s on now, it’s not a good one. He won’t because he loves his brother and can’t do it, but it’s nice to imagine a future with Dean. Something _normal_. 
  * What’s normal? He’s fucked his twin brother, he’s chasing _two_ masked vigilantes, and his gut instinct tells him his search for Jimmy and the search for the Red Hood will lead him to the same place. 
  * “Hi, Uncle Cas. How was your day?”   
“Good, sweetheart. How was school?”  
Claire looks disappointed every time he comes home. There’s a moment, always brief, when she lights up, and he thinks it’s the realization that he’s not Jimmy that brings about that pout.   
It guts him every time, but he understands.   
He misses Jimmy, too.
  * Dean eyes him funny when he meets Claire.  
“You’ve got a kid?”  
“My niece.”  
Dean nods but doesn’t say anything. 
  * They politely say good-bye to the babysitter and Dean takes him on a date. They’re at a bar talking when a sports game is cut off for _Breaking News_ about another Red Hood attack. Dean does a double take when he sees it. Castiel barely notices and promptly ignores Dean’s reaction, because there’s _leaked video footage_. 
  * It’s shaky and the man has a mask on—not the trademark Red Hood, just a simple black mask—but Castiel knows that face. It’s _his_ fucking face. Fucking Jimmy, he _knew_ it, and now he’s going to have to clean things up. 
  * “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to cut the night short. I hope you don’t mind—”  
“Not at all,” Dean says quickly. He looks equally antsy to leave. “Rain check?”  
“Of course.” 
  * He puts together his research on the Red Hood and Jimmy. It leaves only one small warehouse that could be his hideout, and Castiel, brazen as ever, storms in. 
  * His argument with Jimmy is heated, and it doesn’t do him any good that Jimmy looks _amazing_. More fit than before with a manic confidence that does wonders. Never mind that _outfit_. How does he manage to get his thighs into that tight leather?
  * It’s mid argument that they kiss. They’ve pushed into each other’s personal space and… yeah. They can’t seem to help themselves. 
  * Kissing leads to sex. Very rough, angry sex on the warehouse floor. 
  * They’re sweaty and filthy as they lay in their afterglow, however short lived it might be. They hear footsteps at the same time, reach for their guns and come up empty-handed only to be confronted by— 
  * “Dean!?”  
“Nightwing!?”  
The brothers look at each other.   
“_Who_!?”
  * Dean tosses a manilla folder at them and it crashes onto the floor, photos and papers flying everywhere. Castiel recognizes it instantly—his notes on Jimmy, his scrambled efforts to find his erratic, grieving brother—but Jimmy takes a moment to look them over. His eyes go wide and he glares at his brother. 
  * “You were keeping tabs on me!?”  
Castiel can’t even pretend to be apologetic. 
  * “You have a fucking twin?” Dean accuses them both. They look at each other, completely unsure how he knows the other brother, until Dean grumbles, “I’m fucking twins who are fucking each other… What even _is_ my life?” 
  * They talk. It’s long and exhausting and it answers _so many questions_, ones none of them knew they had until that moment. 
  * They come to an agreement. 
  * Jimmy’s finished off the cartel, and Castiel is willing to let them both get off the hook for things—assuming no one else figures out their secret—if they make some concessions. 
  * Number One: No more vigilantes. No more masks. No more skirting the law. 
  * Number Two: Jimmy gets grief counseling and starts seeing Claire. 
  * Number Three: Dean focuses all of his anger and money into something more productive, like charity work for the families and people suffering from Demon Blood.
  * Number Four: The three of them continue to explore this accidental love triangle they’ve fallen into. 
  * “... Can we still fuck each other while we figure it out?”  
“I believe that’s a necessary part of the ‘exploring’.”  
“Then count me in.”  
“Me too.” 
  * It’s a slow process, but it gets them where they need to be. Castiel the detective, Jimmy the father, Dean the charity worker. And Claire’s lucky enough not just to get her dad back, but to gain two new ones in the process. 
  * Note: Sam moves to join his brother there. He gets back into law and becomes an attorney for the DA. He and Cas work together all the time and it makes Dean really proud of them. 


End file.
